She is now working as a post-doc at the Personal Robots Group at the MIT Media Lab , directed by Cynthia Breazeal (see Talking Robots interview). At MIT, she’s looking at how to create robots that are able to assist and work with humans in a natural, predictable and robust way by gathering data through a new online game dubbed Mars Escape in a world premiere at using the Internet to study human-robot interactions. Anyone can participate in this experiment by taking on the role of a robot or an astronaut in an attempt to escape from their oxygen-deprived Mars-base without leaving anything important behind. Give it a try!

Using the data from thousands of players, Chernova will look at how to use the dialogs and actions performed online to generate a computational behavior model for each player. This model will then be tested online and then implemented in the Nexi Robot in a physical replica of the Mars Escape game that will be set-up in the Boston Museum of Science.

Kenton Williams is expert in the bolts and nuts of Nexi. As a Mechanical Engineer, he will be telling us about the technical aspects and challenges behind the robot and his thesis on making Nexi learn physics!